Why Michael Bay couldn't refuse Transformers 4

David Konow, 22nd October 2016

Genre fans are obviously excited that Transformers will be back for another round in June 2014.

Not only that, but once again Michael Bay is steering the ship. We’ve said it many times before, but it bears repeating once again: Love him or hate him, who else could helm Transformers but Bay?

As you may recall, Bay always swore he’d never revisit the franchise he made his own, but as the veteran Hollywood director told Huffington Post writer Mike Ryan: "I thought I was done. Then the ride came out [at Universal Studios] and the two-and-a-half-hour lines. Then you’re thinking, Oh my God, someone’s going to take this over. You start doing a lot of soul searching…the studio says they want to restart the franchise. And someone could come in here and screw it up, you know?"

Bay said that with Transformers 4, he wants to "set it on a new footing, we change a lot of things – but we keep the history of the three in place. We broaden it so it can be set up and be carried on – it would have a better chance for survival…You don’t want to leave Transformers in bad hands."

Bay also has his smaller, lower budget black comedy, Pain and Gain, hitting theaters on April 16, 2013, and as Bay said, "You’ve got to do different things in life. It’s fun to do something different." He said he loves smaller films like the work of Steven Soderberg and the Coen Brothers, but Bay lamented that "studios aren’t doing those type of movies anymore. They just want to do these big, big movies or they want to do these tiny little micro-movies."

But as far as Transformers, Bay said 4 will be the last one, or perhaps he means the last one he directs. If there’s anything to be learned from all this, it’s never say never. As Bay told the Huffington Post, "When you have a franchise, it’s [really] very hard to give it up."